
Class Li 

Book . 

Copyright }1^_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Education of 
Childhood g^it. 

Edward Levolsier Blackshear, A. M., L.L.D. 

Principal Prairie View State Normal and 

Industrial College 

Prairie View, Waller County, Texas 

Active Member National Educatfonal Association and Fellow American Association 
for Advancement of Science 




NEW YORK 
EVERY WHERE PUBLISHING CO. 



V^V 



^ 



% 



Copyright, 191 1 

BY 

Edward L. Blackshear. 



The Education of Childhood* 



THAT part of the period of adolescence which 
lies between the ages of five or six, and thir- 
teen or fourteen years of age, and which we 
shall call "childhood" for the purposes of this article, 
is the period of greatest natural nen^e response to 
sensor stimuli from environment, of greatest motor 
response to sensor re-actions, and of the greatest 
cerebral plasticity — the period in which mind- 
growth is most certain and vigorous. It is the period 
in which the mind is forming and is most active. 
It is the period in which perception or ideation is 
most intense and its results most permanent. The 
sense-percepts, the motor-impulses, formed in this 
period, lie at the basis of all subsequent mental life 
and development. This period we may call child- 
hood, and the child is, in an important sense, more 
intellectual than the man, except along the lines in 
which man has had special training and experience. 
In manhood the active powers, in both their physical 
(or physiological) and psychological aspects, predom- 
inate, from the necessity of the life struggle. In the 
child, mind, as imagination and curiosity, is domi- 

1 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

nant. There is the desire to know, to ascertain, for 
the sake of knowledge and the satisfaction of know- 
ing. Childhood is the period when knowledge, fun- 
damental knowledge, is most efficiently attained. 
When the mind is matured it is busy, not in the 
acquisition of new ideas, but in the organization of 
experience and action about the fundamental ideas 
acquired in childhood. The fundamental sense-per- 
cepts of childhood may be considered as centers 
about which subsequent mental experience is 
grouped. Hence the importance of primary edu- 
cation, as it really and powerfully influences the 
organization of the content of all after mental experi- 
ences, while the vividness or vigor of the perceptive 
action of the mind in childhood determines the tone 
or intensity of the mental life of the adult. 

An error in educational practice, one that violates 
the law of efficiency, is that of a horizontal division 
or arrangement of subjects or studies as primary, 
grammar-school, and high-school subjects, respect- 
ively. Whereas all the broadly differentiated sub- 
jects of educational value possess phases correspond- 
ing respectively to the phases of the educational 
development of adolescence, broadly indicated by the 
grades of school life and! the threefold grouping of 
the grades or yearly curricula, into primary, gram- 
mar, and high-school groups. And the varying 
aspects or phases of subjects of educational study 
2 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

and practic© correspond to the age and development 
of the child, while methods of instruction must cor- 
respond on the one hand to the development of the 
child, and on the other to the corresponding devel- 
opment of the subject. That is, the arrangement or 
■development of studies should be vertical, each of 
the essential branches of study beginning in the 
lowest grade in elementary form. 

Take, for example, the subject of physics, which 
in some curricula is not undertaken until the high- 
school period. It is evident that there are phases of 
this subject (the educational as well as practical 
value of which is coming into growing appreciation) 
which are fully within the scope of the interest and 
intelligence of the child, even of the lowest, or first 
primary grade. 

A natural beginning would be with the properties 
of matter, those which are discovered by sense-per- 
ception, excluding such a property as impenetrabil- 
ity, which is apprehended philosophically or logically. 
The phenomenal or perceptive aspect of physics is 
what can and should be presented to the child of the 
primary school. Such properties as hard, soft, rough, 
smooth, velvety, elastic, heavy, light, brittle, sticky, 
oily, are comprehensible to little children and can 
be illustrated by actual objects or substances, pre- 
sented in the class-room. The three states of matter 
can easily be illustrated by a piece of ice on a 

3 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

hot stove or other hot surface. The child will see the 
ice become water and he will see the vapor accom- 
panying the steam. Simple physical experiments are 
quite in order in the primary grades. Small children 
take note of physical phenomena. They are inter- 
ested in the ignition and burning of a match, in the 
flight of a toy balloon. In the class-room, experi- 
ments in capillary attraction, in electrical and mag- 
netic repulsion and attraction, simple experiments, 
of course, to illustrate the more obvious and more 
simple effects of natural forces, could profitably be 
performed by the children, under direction. During 
the four years of the primary school, a graded course 
of observation and experiment is possible, that would 
aid in developing the perceptive powers and in 
acquiring fundamental ideas to be organized later as 
real science, or knowledge causally connected and 
logically arranged. The aim here would be to lead 
the child to see that behind phenomena are forces of 
nature explaining them — that there is law, order, sys- 
tem, in nature, despite her contrary appearance — 
and to identify and classify these forces. 

It is erroneous, the belief that the normal child of 
five or six years of age has no idea of cause or force 
in the physical world. Of course he gets it uncon- 
sciously from his experience at home, from the ex- 
pressed opinions and conduct of his parents and older 
members of the family. Simple as this conception 

4 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

is to us, that of cause, physical, explainable cause 
and order in nature, it marks one of the greatest dis- 
tinctions between the Oriental mind and civilization 
and the Western mind and civilization. The vast 
hordes of Asia, despite a certain art culture and depth 
lof philosophy, yet live in an atmosphere of intellec- 
tual and moral darkness because they are devoid of 
the idea of law and order in the physical world which 
every American child of seven or eight possesses. 
Hence, the Asiatic lives in a world of superstition, 
peopled with) forms and forces of gloom, horror and 
terror. 

In no respect is the white man's superiority 
more patent than in his conception of nature as an 
orderly system proceeding uniformly. And on this 
he bases his science, his machinery, and his inven- 
tions and discoveries. He has a foot-hold, intellec- 
tually; a standpoint; a starting place. But the 
Oriental mind is lost in the trackless wastes and bot- 
tomless quagmires of superstition and unchecked, 
unordered, metaphysical speculation. And the high- 
est achievement of the Oriental is the development, 
not of the mind proper, but of certain abnormal phys- 
ical powers of the brain, as manifested in alleged 
"psychical" phenomena — phenomena which in real- 
ity are not psychic, that is, not really psychological 
or mental, but actually physiological — ^appertaining 
as they do to the brain, which is a material or physi- 

5 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

cal organ, and not to the mind, which is immaterial 
and unphysical. We say the mind is immaterial 
because its basic phenomenon consciousness is not 
apprehended or apprehensible by the senses, and all 
mental phenomena may be considered as develop- 
ments of consciousness. 

The child of five or six years of age has an idea 
of cause, of force iii the physical world about, and 
such a child frequently asks questions which indi- 
cate clearly that he is interested in the causes of 
physical happenings. The writer recalls vividly the 
questions of a little boy, a relative of the family for 
whom he (the writer) was working in a garden. 
This happened over thirty years ago, while the writer 
was making his way through college. This little boy 
would ask interesting questions. One day, after a 
shower, he wanted to know v/here the rain came 
from. When told that the rain came from the 
clouds, he wanted to know v/hat the clouds were and 
where they came from. When told of the great 
ocean from which the clouds arise, he wanted to 
know who made the great ocean water. When told 
God made the ocean, the boy asked, "Who made 
God?" This child was not flippant, he v/as serious. 
And yet there was nothing precocious about him. 
He v/as just a normal child. And every child has 
this inquisitive spirit, this undeveloped, philosophic 
instinct. 

6 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

Every normal child is both a scientist and r 
philosopher in embryo. He thirsts to know facti 
and even more so, to know the why of these facts. 
But present methods of child-rearing tend only to 
suppress the child's spirit of inquiry and to stamp 
out the spirit of initiative and spontaneity. These 
methods are methods of manufacture rather than of 
true culture of the child's powers. Their effect is to 
produce a Chinese-like uniformity and sameness 
rather than to develop the individuality and person- 
ality of the child. Intellectuality in a child is 
regarded as an abnormal symptom, and it seems to 
be believed that the wise child, like the good child, 
will die young — unless his desire for wisdom is 
checked. It was this superstition that led a certain 
parent, who was alarmed by his child's questionings 
about the origin and meaning of certain familiar 
phenomena, to give the child a course of laxative 
medicine. His child craved intellectual food, but 
was given pills. In later educational life, the boy 
who possesses an unusual craving for knowledge — 
a passion for studies — is ridiculed as a "grind." 
The effects of this widespread universal suppression 
of the manifestation of positive vigorous intellectu- 
ality on the intellectual life of a nation; on its prog- 
ress in literature, science and philosophy; on the 
production of men and women of genius — are bound 
to be unfavorable. 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

No one v/ill pretend that a child is capable of 
studying philosophy as such, or of engaging in a 
philosophical or theological discussion in form and 
terms. But the child undoubtedly possesses ^he phil- 
osophical spirit. He wants to know both the what 
and the why. This spirit is much stronger in the 
average child than in the average adult who no 
longer cares about the why and wherefore of rain- 
fall, being now only concerned in the fact of rain- 
fall, its amount and its bearing on crops and prices. 

What is true of physics as related to the curricu- 
lum of child life, is- equally true of geometry. 
Geometrical figures are of a more vital, result-pro- 
ducing, percept-forming interest to children than 
they are to adults or to youth of the high-school 
period, wherein geometry is usually first presented 
as a subject of study. The high-school boy's inter- 
est in geometrical figures is incidental. It is required 
of him to study about them, and he does so because 
It is a part of the course and as a matter of personal 
pride in keeping up his marks and class standing. 
The interest of the child is deep, genuine, primitive, 
fundamental; 'and he is just as capable, during the 
years of the primary-school, of studying much of the 
facts — not the logical processes of formal demon- 
stration — of geometry, as the high-school boy, with 
this difference in his favor, as before stated, that 
the study is of more real interest, his ideation more 

8 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

vivid, and its- results, psychologically more perma- 
nent and more fruitful. His progress will be 
slower, of course, but surer. And in the primary- 
school the maxim should be, "Make haste slowly'" 
Haste, hustle, worry, with their attendant impatience 
and imperfect results, with their effects of "nervous- 
ness" on thej part of teacher and taught, are out of 
place in the primary grades, particularly. Not that 
there should be dullness or dragging. Neither 
should there be rushing or driving. There should 
be the natural atmosphere of cheerfulness, of inter- 
est, and the natural movement and energy bom of 
interest, not that haste born of the forcing process 
of commands, nagging and driving. The source of 
momentum in the primary-school should be from 
within, within the heart and mind of the child and 
with the united hearts and minds of teacher and 
child — not from without in the imperious will of 
teacher and principal. 

The fundamental geometrical percepts formed in 
early life have a value increased in geometric ratio 
over the value of such percepts formed in high- 
school life, in that they come into play as formative 
ideas early, and are effective during the entire pre- 
high-school period — giving enlarged powers of per- 
ception and apperception, which influence helpfully 
all subsequent educational development. 

A boy of six or seven learns readily such simple 
9 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

geometrical percepts as straight line, curved line, 
broken line; angle, right angle, acute angle, obtuse 
angle; perpendicular line, oblique line, parallel 
lines; circle, diameter, chord, radius, circumference, 
arc, sphere, hemisphere. Later on he acquires the 
meaning of triangle, quadrilateral, polygon, square, 
rectangle, parallelogram; of cube, prism, pyramid, 
cone. 

The drawing of these figures will be of great 
interest to the child. He can use the rule and pen- 
cil with interest and profit. 

The boy of eight, or even of seven, can be led to 
see that a line perpendicular to one of several par- 
allels is perpendicular to each of them. He will 
discover the fact, though no attempt should be 
made at a formal logical demonstration. He will 
discover that a diameter divides a circle into two 
equal parts; that a radius, perpendicular to a chord, 
bisects the chord and its arc; that every chord 
except a diameter divides the circle into two un- 
equal parts; that an indefinite number of diameters 
may be drawn in the same circle; that all these 
diameters are equal, etc. 

He can be taught in the second or third year of 
primary-school life to construct geometrical figures 
by geometrical rules, beginning with the construc- 
tion of the circle. He can be introduced to meas- 
urement and simple drawings to scale. The import- 
10 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

ance of an early introduction to measurement, which 
plays so increasingly an important part in modern 
physical science and in all forms of industry and 
engineering, will be acknov/ledged. "As the twig is 
bent, so the tree is inclined." This old maxim 
applies to mental life as truly as to the bodily life 
and the character life. 

Of course, this is no attempt to outline a detailed 
course in physics, geometry, or any other subject, 
for the guidance of instruction and training in the 
primary-grammar school, but rather to indicate the 
practicability of such an outline at the hands of 
expert educators, and to show that such courses as 
are here advocated are within the range of the devel- 
opment of the child and that such courses properly 
outlined and taught, will greatly facilitate that devel- 
opment, and will constitute the best possible, most 
economical and efficient, preparation for the taking 
up of advanced courses along the same lines. It is 
further contended that there will be both an increased 
development and a great saving of time, in that the 
child will be ready to undertake advanced courses 
at an earlier period, and at the same time be better 
prepared than now for the mastery of these courses. 

And finally, it is pointed out that the range of sub- 
jects within the eight school years which constitute 
the entire life of most children — ^making the pri- 
mary-grammar school the real school of the people 

11 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

— will be extended so as to puti in' the possession of 
this majority of children knowledge and skill, which 
now they never attain. It would seem a wise, a 
patriotic thing, to focus educational attention upon 
these eight years of school life, and upon the possi- 
bilities of children during this period, remembering 
that whatever increases the range and efficiency of 
the educational experience and development of this 
important period will affect the entire system of 
higher education, acting and reacting positively and 
favorably upon all the schools — the colleges, the 
universities, the professional schools and the schools 
of engineering. 

A nation depending, as this nation does, — for exis- 
tence and progress in time of peace; for defence 
or aggressive attack in time of war (which often 
comes when least desired or expected) — upon the 
intelligence, initiative and patriotism of its people, 
whose sentiment is the source of government and 
law and the only bulwark for the maintenance of 
the one and the enforcement of the other — such a 
nation must give increasing attention to the educa- 
tion and training of its children. Such a nation 
must conceive of the education of its children as 
being its chief preoccupation and business. Educa- 
tional questions in such a nation cannot have a 
merely professional, narrowed, pedagogic interest. 
They are of universal national import and are wor- 

12 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

thy the attention of the highest statesmanship and 
most exalted and most capable patriotism. In such 
a nation the teacher should stand in higher public 
and national' regard than is now, as a rule, accorded 
in this country. In the future, a nation will be 
gauged by the esteem in which the teachers of its 
children are held. By this standard, the Germans 
already stand preeminent. In the achievement of 
German unity, and in the subsequent development 
of the Empire which embodies that unity, the "pro- 
fessor" has played an equal part with the soldier 
and is almost equally honored. The organic parent- 
hood of the nation, as manifested in its educational 
sentiment and systems, should foster with peculiar 
care and power the manifold interests of its child- 
life. 

This great republic, surpassing all nations in 
v/ealth and in the totality of its domestic and for- 
eign commerce, with its amazing energy and fertil- 
ity of material invention, is surely able to see to it 
that not one of its little ones should suffer from 
physical want or educational neglect. Its motto, in 
its provisions for its little ones, should ever be, "Get 
the best!" For the best is never a whit too good 
for the child — the best in school-buildings, equip- 
ment, and play-groimds ; the best in courses of 
instruction, the best in the selection of instructors; 
and last but not least, the best in the way of physi- 

13 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

cal nutrition and comfort. These tender offshoots of 
the nation's physical life should not be allowed — 
even one of them — to suffer as many of them do — 
pale and anaemic — from frost, cold and hunger, in 
want even of shelter and a comfortable sleeping- 
place, and of suitable clothing, in the fearful north- 
ern winter. In a nation which is one of the world's 
granaries and one of its great beef-markets, thous- 
ands of its own children go hungry to school and 
hungry to bed — while other thousands do not go to 
school at all and some — to the shame of the country 
— have not where to lay their heads. 

To return to the subject of geometry-teaohing in 
the primary-school: it can be said in brief, that the 
boy in the first four years of the primary-school can 
and should acquire the ability to construct a variety 
of geometrical figures. He can acquire intelligently 
the definition of these figures, thus attaining funda- 
mental form-percepts, of value in all the after-study 
of mathematics. He can learn by, degrees to ana- 
lyze and to discuss these figures. For example, set 
a boy of nine, say, after the preliminary training of 
previous grades, to the examination of a right prism 
and does any one believe that this boy would fail 
to discover that the lateral edges of a prism are 
equal; the lateral faces, equal; that the faces are 
rectangles, etc. How much more this discovery will 
mean to the boy as a factor in his mental growth, 
14 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

as a stimulant to his mental development, than it 
would mean to have him, later on in the high-school, 
to commit the same facts to memory from a text- 
book. (Of course, actual models would be put 
before the child.) 

Thus, what has been called "inventionar' geome- 
try, the facts of elementary geometry, their discov- 
ery by the child, geometrical definition and con- 
struction, and geometrical drawing, are fit subjects 
for primary instruction. 

A significant fact, sought to be emphasized right 
here, is, that present subjects and methods under- 
estimate the mental force and range of child life in 
general and in particular the really tremendous 
potential nerve and mind energy of the American 
white boy — and though in somewhat lesser degree, 
by reason of the facfl that his educational opportuni- 
ties are frequently much less favorable, of the 
American colored boy. Children are put and kept 
at exercises and studies that do not interest them, 
because they fail to awaken the abilities of the chil- 
dren. They do not call out the child's energies. 
Hence arise indifference and dullness. Indifference 
occasions disorder and necessitates force or driving 
and even corporal chastisement. The child becomes 
a subject for discipline. He ceases to be a pupil, a 
learner, or disciple, and becomes a prisoner; and 
the teacher, a sort of jailer or policeman. The child 

15 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

mutinies, and rebels; or he submits with a mental 
and emotional reservation that becomes an incentive 
to future outbreaks of disorder. 

Referring again to thei subject of physics, it is an 
appropriate subject for the primary grades, taught, 
not in its mathematioal-philosophical aspect, but in 
its phenomenal or descriptive phases, by observation 
and simple experiments. The subject of electricity 
is one that has interesting and simple phenomenal 
p'hases that will appeal wonderfully to <ihildren when 
presented by the sympathetic, skillful instructor. 
Beginning with simple experiments in electrifica- 
tion, lessons can be graded and adapted leading on 
'by slow, carefully-taken steps, to such other elec- 
trical and magnetic phenomena as are within the 
•comprehension of children. Similarly, there could 
be performed with the assistance of the children 
under the teacher's direction, simple experiments in 
heat, light, sound, capillary attraction, etc. In short, 
a graded series of experiments can readily be 
devised by the skilled teacher who understands well 
the subject of physics, that would meet the child's 
interest in natural phenomena — ^an interest which is 
innate, and persistent, unless it is systematically 
repressed by unnatural methods oni the part of 
teachers and parents. Children have a vast curi- 
osity or active capacity of interest, which is too 
often misused because not educatively developed 

16 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

and directed. To command the entire range of the 
child's capacities of interest and action, and to con- 
trol and develop them, is to go far toward a right 
education of him or her. 

Present methods and systems in the way of man- 
ual and industrial training and of out-door play- 
grounds and out-door sports, are beginning to meet 
with some approach to adequacy the child's love for 
and need of physical action and exertion. But the 
child's capacity for knowledge is not met. He asks, 
in his very mental make-up and attitude, for bread, 
but he is given the husks of an a-b, ab; e-b, eb-sys- 
tem of education, which is in effect and fact a sys- 
tem of repression, of pedagogic "foot-binding." 

The results of this neglect to make the course of 
study correspond with the child's curiosity or desire 
for knowledge, and witli his capacity for the acqui- 
sition and assimilation of knowledge, are a waste of 
the child's capacity, a blunting of it, or a misdirec- 
tion of it; secondly, a postponement to a later date 
of the study of things which the child ought already 
to have mastered, and which he must then acquire 
under the disadvantage of diminished emotional 
interest and motor response; thirdly, he must post- 
pone still further or omit entirely, in the case of the 
majority of children,^ things he needs to know and 
master. Thus the principles of economy and effi- 
ciency are violated. 

17 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

If an idea or percept is to be most potent or 
efficient psychologically, both in sheer persistence, 
and, in power of assimilation through apperception, 
or of combination with other percepts to form larger 
units (concepts) ; or in capability to enter into the 
construction of ideals as products of imagination^ — 
then the given idea or percept must be acquired 
at the life-period of greatest cerebral plasticity 
or receptivity, of greatest emotional and motor 
response to perceptual stimuli. 

Not that the given percept (any idea of reality 
gained directly through observation or experience) 
may not be acquired at a later period in apparently 
as short or even shorter time and with as much or 
even more apparent ease. But the given percept 
acquired later will not possess equal potential effi- 
ciency, psychologically speaking; will not possess an 
equal degree of what one might call affinity or power 
of attraction, assimilation or combination. The idea 
or percept itself as a sort of psychological atom or 
molecule will not possess the same inherent energy. 
For ideas or percepts (and percept-building is the 
chief business of the school for children), must be 
regarded as having powers analogous to the dynamic 
powers of the physical molecule, or the affinity 
powers of the chemical atom, or the attractive-repul- 
sive powers of the hypothetical ion with its capacity 
of attracting or repelling electrons. There must be 

18 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

organic structure in the nerve-centers corresponding 
to every really distinct percept and as the physical 
concomitant of the mental processes of perception, 
recollection through association of ideas, of apper- 
ception or the differentiation of percepts, of imag- 
ing, of concept-forming, of judgment and reason- 
ing, there must be analogous physical processes and 
an inter-play of nerve-force and nerve-currents anal- 
ogous to electro-magnetic induction together with 
molecular, atomic and electronic changes accom- 
panying and distinguishing every mental act and 
process, or every distinct class or grade, in the com- 
plex and hierarchy of such acts and processes. For 
we must necessarily conceive the mental life of 
which the brain and nerves — the cerebro-spinal sys- 
tem — are the body or organism, as being accompa- 
nied by a neural integration ordered by the same 
laws of nutrition and assimilation, growth, natural 
selection, and evolution within the neural organism, 
that we discover in the outer world of living forms. 
Using an analogy from biology, it is interesting to 
consider a percept in its formation and development, 
through apperceptive assimilation, as comparable to 
3L living protoplasmic cell, and as possessing and 
exercising analogous functions; and a concept, as 
a group of such percept-cells so correlated as to exer- 
cise a common psychologic function and to constitute 
a sort of psychologic tissue. The birth or genera- 

19 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

tion of a percept would thus be analogous to 
the generation of a new life-cell. Indeed, it would 
seem probable that the generation and development 
of percepts and concepts are accompanied by the 
generation and development of neural cells and com- 
binations of cells— tissue — as the material concomi- 
tants of mental development. Not that the relation 
of physical causation exists between these neural 
organs and processes and their mental correspondents 
or equivalents. For by no stretch of logic or imagi- 
nation can, for example, the mental perception of a 
noise or a sound be represented as the result of the 
molecular vibrations which constitute noise or sound 
in the physical, objective sense. Vibrations can 
3nly produce vibrations. For while the conception 
of the transformableness of physical energy is phil- 
osophically acceptable, the transformation of physi- 
cal energy into a mental eq>uivalence — ^as conscious- 
ness, perception, conception, and the like — is inca- 
pable even of expression by any existing terminology. 
Yet the capability and tendency of the human 
mind to assume states that correspond to the 
<ihanges in environment, as registered in and by 
means of the brain, is a fundamental fact in psy- 
chology as related to the process of child education 
and training. For it is by the formal and orderly 
transformation or prearrangement of the environ- 
ment, or of the stimuli that constitute it, that the 
20 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

teacher essays to induce changes in the mental com- 
plex and continuity of his pupils. And the more 
perfect his knowledge of the laws of the spontaneous 
powers of the mind; of the gradual, progressive 
ascent of this spontaneity to higher stages during 
the all-important period of adolescence, and of the 
reaction to stimuli of these phases in both their 
simultaneous and serial relationships — ^the more 
certain and sound the mental growth. Just how or 
why, except as the fiat of the Divine Creator, the 
soul or mind changes its modes, moods and atti- 
tudes, as self co-changes in rapport with other 
changes in the physico-psychic simultaneity — even 
as the cloud tints shift with tho varying angle of the 
setting sun^ — is likely to remain forever inexplicable. 
But it is just these changes that reveal the world to 
the soul as the ever-present "co-efficient" or "func- 
'tion" of these changes, and the soul to itself as an 
entity or being alike conscious of changes in itself 
and perceptive of changes in that external complex 
and continuity of form and movement which we call 
environment. 

In all study of the mind, and its development and 
education, curiosity and interest center about the 
brain and its connections. Even the materialist 
must pause in wonder, in astonishment, in presence 
of this marvellous gray-and-white substance — ^the 
ultima thule of physical refinement, delicacy, adap- 

21 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

tiveness, and organization. Its extreme sensitive- 
ness enabling the astronomer to perceive and study 
the fragile light-waves ^from nebulae whose dis- 
tances are incomprehensibly vast — its robustness 
enabling the trained civilian to endure the extremes 
of stress and strain incident to modern life — make 
"^ the miracle of nature. 

A more characteristic function of the brain than 
that of mere telegraphic or telephonic or phono- 
graphic functions, is its capacity, tendency and cer- 
tainty to make itself a counterpart of the outer 
world, an epitome or replica of both experience and 
of environment as the external condition of expe- 
rience. All soul or mind phenomena leave their 
traces in the nerve tracts or ganglia; every nerve 
node, once assumed in correspondence to either 
impression or expression of the' soul leaves its trace 
and a tendency to reassume itself, to reappear. And 
repetition of the stimulus but increases the tendency 
to such reassumption or reapparition. All impres- 
sions from without and all expressions from within, 
outward, register themselves in the brain, or rather, 
they organize the brain in a dynamic or vital way. 

And thus the brain, with its nerve-cells, nerve-cen- 
ters, and nerve-fibers, and the reactions of nerve 
energy among them, becomes more and more the 
ivicarious substitute for that environment with its 
forms and forces. The impressions left in the brain 
22 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

by the stimuli of environment and experience come 
to be studied instead of the stimuli. They become 
the neural equivalents of these stimuli. Thus is cre- 
ated an inner world of neural-mental equivalents, 
whose forms and forces, while in fact wholly differ- 
ent both in form and action from the v/orld of exter- 
nal reality, yet present in consciousness an illusion 
of perfect similarity and almost of absolute identity. 
Problems are worked out and relations discovered 
which but for these mental-neural equivalents 
would be impossible of solution or discovery. And 
the business or aim of the schools, in this point of 
view, is to make the brain a correct replica of the 
environment so that its actions and reactions will 
bear at every stage immediate and complete corres- 
pondence or identity with reality as observed in 
nature andi as experienced in correct bodily action, 
habits and conduct. In adult life, the mind is influ- 
enced only in an incidental v/ay by the immediate 
direct influences of the physical environment. The 
adult mind lives in and through this inner world 
which is created during the period of adolescence, 
the building period — an inner world made up of 
neural-mental equivalents of experience-percepts; 
and their higher integration or differentiation-con- 
cepts. 

Under right training the adolescent mind becomes 
the map or key to nature and history, and in the 
23 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

study of literature becomes "the heart of the world." 
Thus the brain becomes the complex finger-board on 
which the soul plays and by which it feels and hears 
the vibrations, the music, of man, earth, and the 
spheres; or the electric switch-board whose end- 
lessly differentiated combinations unlock and direct 
the unmeasured stores of mental and physical 
energy — the energies alike of nature and of mind. 

In no strained or irrelevant sense the universe 
itself becomes, thus, conscious, intelligent, vocal, in 
man, the man of ideal culture and character; in 
him "the heavens declare the glory of God and the 
firmament showeth His handiwork"; in him "day 
unto day uttereth speech; night unto night showeth 
knowledge." 

The importance of so directing the education of 
childhood that the mind of the child shall, by means 
of first-hand impressions of reality, form a wide 
range of percepts — form them vividly so as to give 
them intense and permanent powers of growth and 
assimilation with a range wide enough to afford the 
sufficient basis for an after conceptual and ethical 
development which shall meet the varied needs and 
exigencies of an active and noble life — is readily 
granted. The percept is all-important. In its begin- 
ning, it occasions the rise of consciousness, and at 
the same time reveals the outer world through the 
variations in consciousness occasioned by the flux 
24 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

and rhythm of stimuli. Philosophy, Science and 
Education have their root in the percept — philoso- 
phy being based on the fact of consciousness to 
which the percept gives rise or occasion; science, 
based on the what or content of consciousness, being 
an orderly account and systematic arrangement of 
the differentiations of consciousness, as occasioned 
by changes in the stimuli of the environment, and 
resting on the assumption that there is a corres- 
pondence between the differentiations in conscious- 
•ness and the differentiations in the environment, the 
intuition of which gives that sense of fact and real- 
ity which is the basis of scientific truth; education 
being concerned with the development of percepts 
and their organization into concepts as a means of 
so forming the intellect that it m.ay become the 
efficient and reliable agent and servant of will and 
conscience^ — the ultimate goal of education and life 
itself being essentially and necessarily a moral one 
— the development of character. 

The importance of the percept is recognized by 
Prof. William James who makes "percepts and con- 
cepts the two fundamental constituents of being and 
the function of thought proper the substitution of a 
conceptual order for the perceptual order in which 
experience originally comes, thought in its develop- 
ment creating a map of life which makes possible 
its revaluation." Thus it becomes the business of 

25 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

the primary-school or school of childhood to initiate 
and organize the perceptual order with such a 
wealth and energy of neural-mental equivalent- 
stimuli as to make it the fit material or nexus which 
"thought proper" shall transform into the concep- 
tual order, which will and conscience in turn, by the 
alchemy — or algebra — of daily life, shall evaluate 
into the highest order — the ethical, or order of 
-character. 

The relation of physical health and bodily activity 
to mental health and activity is everywhere recog- 
nized, as well as the relation of the brain and ner- 
vous system to thought and mental growth. Bodily 
health, on which mental growth depends, becomes 
increasingly important when we consider that the 
brain, which depends on bodily vigor for its strength 
of action and development, has a double function — 
on' the one hand it is the organ which controls and 
co-ordinates the physiological functions, and on the 
other hand it is the organ of mental-spiritual life and 
growth. And the brain, as the organ of mental life, 
must be an integration or higher organization of the 
brain as tha organ of physiological regulation. And 
it is in connection with this higher integration — 
which is one, not of specifically differentiated organs 
in the brain, but rather of function, using existing 
nerve-paths and connections — lines and centers of 
nerve-force already developed in the exercise of 
26 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

physiological co-ordination — that the true mind-life 
manifests and functions. 

Hence, no consideration is more practical or more 
fundamental, incidentally, in the pedagogy of child- 
hood as related to the formation and development 
of a vigorous perceptual life as the basis for a 
higher conceptual and ethical life, than the health 
and vigor of the enveloping organism as body and 
brain. And this consideration becomes imperative 
in view of the fact, that the transformation and lift- 
ing of material from its condition when taken into 
the organism as food, to the highly refined condition 
of gray nerve-cells, presuppose and necessitate the 
expenditure of enormous energy even in the case of 
children who might grow up with no formal expe- 
riences of the schools. But the situation becomes a 
more serious one in the case of children in a civil- 
ized community where school life is a customary 
experience and where, hence, the nerve energy must 
be "forced", so to speak, in order to bring the nerve 
strength and tension of the individual children up to 
a degree commensurate with that of the life-stress 
of the adult group or community. Not only must the 
child's body furnish and transform the nourishment 
needed for the production of nerve force and sub- 
stance, but this same body must lift itself from 
infancy to childhood, from childhood to adulthood, 
through the successive stages of adolescence. What 

27 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

a tremendous task is accomplished in this miracle 
of transformation and transition! It is an epitome 
of the ascent of life universal. Truly the child is 
literally maker of himself as an adult. What sym- 
pathy universal manhood should feel for the child 
— ^the coming man! And how is the heart of a 
father touched as he notes the growing- indications 
of maturity in his son! A feeling of comradeship 
arises and, by and by, the son becomes the compan- 
ion of the father. By nature's subtle, inexplicable 
ritual, divinely ordained, the son is initiated into the 
order and chapter of his father — the ancient order 
of man. 

It will be acknowledged that a closer study, a 
deeper understanding, of the functions, hygiene, 
and development of brain and nerve cells in man 
and in child are needed to perfect systems and 
methods, of education in face of the evident difficul- 
ties of the undertaking. 

The study of science, that is, of natural phenom- 
ena, should commence with the beginning of the 
child's school life and continue till its close, in 
proper gradations as to method and content as 
related to the child's capacity. The same statement 
is pertinent as to the study of form and number (or 
quantity in both its spatial and numerical aspects 
including the graphic representation and measure- 
ment of quantities and their inter-relationships), 
28 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

that is, of mathematics, which is an indispensable 
instrument and agent of pure and applied science; 
of industry and engineering. 

As a matter of course, it is assunied that the child, 
on entering school, should commence the study of 
numbers or arithmetic; and he should continue it 
without a text-book, in oral lessons, during the first 
four years, the teacher using blackboard, chart, 
objects, actual weights and measures and toy or 
school money, and the pupil using pencil and tablet. 
The instruction should be on the order of the older 
"intellectual" arithmetic, such as the well-known 
tQxt of Warren Oolburn. The four-years' course 
should cover the subjects of notation, numeration, 
the four fundamental numerical operations, simple 
factoring, the decimal system of United States 
money, the simple tables of weights and measures 
and their use in simple examples involving small 
numbers, and elementary percentage and elementary 
mensuration. The fifth and sixth years should be 
given to the mastery of a comprehensive text in 
modern physical and industrial arithmetic, while the 
seventh and eighth years should be devoted to the 
study of commercial or business arithmetic and to 
the practice of modern elementary double entry 
book-keeping, so taught as to afford incidentally a 
review of the principles and processes of arithmetic 
— ^together with a study of business forms and proc- 

29 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

esses. Along the other mathematical line, after four 
years of the oral teaching of descriptive or phenom- 
enal geometry, with much practice in geometrical- 
mechanical drawing, there should follow one year in 
elementary algebra with special attention to the 
simple equations of the first degree as a preparation 
for the formal study of logical geometry from a 
good text. Then should follow two years of instruc- 
tion in plane and solid geometry in connection with 
a good text-book, and a final or eighth year in col- 
lege or higher algebra, so taught as to constitute an 
introduction to analytic geometry. 

As there are two lines of mathematical study 
which should be pursued simultaneously during the 
childhood school period' — the eight-year primary- 
grammar or elementary period — so also there are 
two simultaneous lines of appropriate study in sci- 
ence — ^the physical or inorganic line and the biologi- 
cal or organic line. Along the inorganic or physical 
line, the order of studies would be as follows : Four 
years of oral lessons with simple experiments and 
illustrations in physics, chemistr}', and mineralogy, 
to be followed by a fifth' year's study of a good text 
in physical geography; a sixth, using a suitable text, 
in physics; a seventh, using a text, in elements of 
chemistry; and the eighth, using a text in mineral- 
ogy with qualitative chemical 'analysis. Free use 
would be made of apparatus, and there should be 

30 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

facilities for elementary laboratory work in physics 
and chemistry. Pupils would be encouraged to make 
much of the apparatus for experiments. Live, active 
boys twelve or thirteen years of age would take far 
more interest in this sort of study and experiment 
than the average college or high-school youth does 
at present, and would get far more out of it. And 
it is strange that educators have so far underesti- 
mated the ability of the intelligent, vigorous, Ameri- 
can boy of from ten to fourteen years. Along the 
organic, vital, or biological line, of the curriculum in 
science, after four years of oral instruction in geog- 
raphy as nature-study, with^ special reference to 
agriculture and giving attention to the study of 
plants and animals and simple bacteriological phe- 
nomena — such as the fermentation of yeast, etc., 
which are intelligible to thd average American boy 
of seven or eight — there would follow a text-book 
which would have to be written by some such com- 
petent authority as Prof. L. H. Bailey of Cornell, 
which would present geography in its biological 
aspect, with especial attention to soils, water, atmos- 
phere, etc., as related to plants, animals, and espec- 
ially to agriculture. This geography would treat of 
life — plant, animal and human — and the factors that 
support and condition life, and the occupations and 
industries which are connected with the artificial 
direction and propagation of living forms useful and 

31 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

necessary to man. After a year's study of such a 
geography, there would follow one year in elemen- 
tary biology of plant and animal forms, one year in 
a text-book in agriculture and forestry proper, and 
one year, the last or eighth, using a text in human 
physiology and hygiene and sanitation. Attention 
would be given in each of these years to elementary 
bacteriology — as related to biology, agriculture and 
physiology. 

Freehand drawing, together with coloring, is 
another line of educational practice appropriate to 
the elementary or primary-grammar school. This 
subject could well alternate or divide time in some 
ratio with mechanical drawing. Drawing is a sub- 
ject of transcendent educational and practical value, 
and should occupy a place equal to that now held by 
arithmetic and reading. It is the language of math- 
•ematics, of mechanics, and of art in general. No 
subject makes a more universal, perennial or useful 
appeal to the interests and activities of the child. It 
is a useful adjunct to many other subjects. It affords 
a natural and helpful outlet for the energies of 
childhood. It should form a continuous part of the 
elementary curriculum. Its value is appreciated by 
both pupils and parents. Its relation as design to 
constructive industrial art in all its phases, makes it 
practically invaluable and indispensable, education- 
ally. 

32 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

Thus far no reference has been made in this dis- 
cussion to handicraft or manual-industrial training 
or education. The educational, as well as vocational 
or practical value of manual-industrial training is 
now universally recognized.^ The child is to be 
trained not alone for thinking, but also for doing, if 
his training is to prepare for useful, well-rounded, 
and well-grounded living. Manual-industrial training 
appeals to the child's active and constructive powers, 
brings him into contact with reality, develops self- 
confidence and self-mastery, cultivates persistence 
and patience, strengthens will-power, and encour- 
ages neatness, order, system, and accuracy. The 
sense of touch, the physical judgment of distance 
and measurement, and the muscular sense, as well 
as muscular skill and control, are other valuable 
results of manual-industrial teaching and training, 
and this form of training should begin the first day 
of the child's school life and continue to its close. 

As one of the useful materials for beginning this 
sort of training in the lowest primary grade, clay 
suggests itself — prepared clay. Its plasticity makes 
it available for the supple, unhardened hands of 
children. Then, children like to handle it and mould 
it into various shapes. Using models such as sphere, 
cube, pyramid, or natural objects, such as apple, 
orange, lemon, pear, a bunch of grapes, a saucer, a 
cup, etc., children can be trained to considerable 

33 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

enjoyable and valuable manual dexterity while 
attaining first-hand ideas of form in three dimen- 
sions. These clay products or articles can be col- 
ored in imitation of the natural originals, to the 
interest, delight and satisfaction of the children. 
The sand-board is successfully used to imitate relief- 
forms of land. 

Cloth is another usable material at this stage, 
being pliable and easily handled. Using the needle 
and thread, boys in the four primary grades should 
be taught the elements of sewing as needlework. 
The educational value of needlework is that it 
requires close attention to detail, to "little things," 
the things of thread and stitches — a lesson of its 
own peculiar value. Then, too, it is not a bad thing 
for every boy or man, even, to be able tO; sew on a 
button properly, or to mend a rent in a garment, or 
even to patch and darn. Lessons in simple cook- 
ing are also entirely appropriate for boys in the pri- 
mary-school grades. It is a strange but prevalent 
error, that men and boys do not need to know or 
learn cooking. Every intelligent person should know 
the principles of practical cooking — ^^be able to cook 
rice, potatoes, or oatmeal; be able to make a stew 
or a hash ; be able to make corn-bread or biscuit or 
light-rolls or bread, from yeast, flour, and other 
ingredients. So much depends in the way of human 
health, life and happiness on food, its preparation 
34 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

and economical purchase and use, that it presents 
itself as worthy of a place in universal primary edu- 
cation. Every educated man should be able to do 
good cooking along some branch of the art. Atten- 
tion should be given to school-gardening, a subject 
whose importance is now fully recognized, especially 
in rural schools. Every human being should be a 
gardener, a florist — should learn to love flowers and 
plants and their cultivation. 

In the fifth year of elementary school life — the 
first grammar-school year — wood is an appropriate 
material for manual-industrial training. The boy of 
ten or eleven years naturally desires a "tool-box", 
and now is the time for the school to turn this inter- 
est to the best account by giving him training in 
joinery, turning, wood-carving and cabinet-making. 
Two years can well be spent in wood-work or sloyd, 
one year in iron-work or forging, and one in the 
simpler principles of plumbing and fitting; of prac- 
tical electrical construction; and in running simple 
engines of the steam and gasoline types. Of course, 
this plai^ would require shops for the boys at every 
grammar-school. And this is as it should be. Most 
boys leave school entirely at the end of the gram- 
mar-school period. Most of them will enter pur- 
suits — industrial pursuits — calling for some mechan- 
ical knowledge and skill — ^and the grammar-school 
should furnish, not all the minutiae and details, but 

35 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

the elements or foundations of this knowledge and 
skill. The grammar-school would not be exactly a 
trade-school, but it would select from carpentry, 
blacksmithing, plumbing, and elementary electric 
and machine engineering, the fundamental, typical 
processes in case of each, and construct of these a 
practical educational synthesis for the training of 
the boys. Besides, the boy who learns the use of 
tools and the value of, drawings in any one trade, 
can readily adapt himself to a different trade. In 
this respect he is unlike the adult mechanic who is 
an "old dog", to whom new tricks, even in his own 
trade, come hard. 

All industrial work in the grammar-school period 
need not be comprised in a single pourse of study 
and practice. There might bei electives. For exam- 
ple, the clay work recommended for the primary 
grades might continue as ceramics throughout the 
grammar-school, giving instruction and practice in 
pottery (lathe and kiln work) , tile and brick-making, 
and concrete construction, now of such great and 
growing importance. Still other courses will suggest 
themselves. 

Any one who thinks boys would not take to this 
sort of industrial practice, this interesting prepara- 
tory, "make-believe" work, knows nothing of boys, 
their likes and dispositions. 

Another pertinent fact is this: such methods as 
36 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

to science-teaching, and mathematics-^teaching, and 
as to manual-industrial training, and as to training 
in book-keeping and business forms, in the gram- 
mar-school, would tend to keep the boys in the gram- 
mar-school; for many boys leave before they even 
complete the grammar-school grades. They leave 
because the instruction does not appeal to them, 
doesn't seem worth while. Also, as a corollary to 
this statement, the methods above suggested would 
'be the means of many more boys entering the high- 
school and completing a course there — whereas now 
they are much in the minority in the high-school. It 
is a fact, that many boys who attend grammar and 
high-school, do so, mainly, because they are inclined 
to please their parents and not because they feel that 
they are getting "their money's worth." 

No reference is made in this discussion, so far, to 
the teaching of reading, writing, spelling, grammar 
and composition, rhetoric and literature — ^^in short to 
the subject of language in its various phases of 
thought expression. This subject, or these sub- 
jects, are already so much emphasized and so well 
distributed that they do not come within the 
range of this discussion, the purpose of which is to 
bring the phenomenal phases of science and mathe- 
matics down into the elementary grades, and to 
insist on the distribution and gradation of the sub- 
ject-matter of the branches included, over the entire 

37 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

primary-grammar school period, as a means of secur- 
ing fuller mental development, and of making the 
eight years of the school life of this period (which 
for most children will comprise their entire school 
life) more completely a preparation for an intelli- 
gent citizenship and for successful breadwinning or 
livelihood. And to insist, further, that drawing and 
manual-training are indispensable elements, also, for 
the elementary curriculum, and should form a con- 
tinuous factor in it. 

There are good grounds, however, for the state- 
ment that too much time is spent in language- 
study, including reading, writing, spelling, and 
grammar, or at least that the results are far 
from commensurate with the time and energy spent 
by teacher and pupil. It will also be granted that, 
notwithstanding the elaborate system of language- 
lessons and text-books, and illustrated, graded read- 
ing-books, together with intricate methods of teach- 
(ing reading, designed to make progress rapid and 
easy, yet children taught by the old methods in 
vogue one or two generations ago, developed a 
stronger love for real literature, wrote a more cor- 
rect, better composed or arranged letter, and had 
better knowledge of the meaning, spelling, use and 
derivation of words, than children trained under 
present methods. It is difficult for a child to make 
language, especially his own native tongue, an object 

38 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

of study, because in childhood the mind finds diffi- 
culty in separating language from thought. Herein 
we see a partial reason why there is greater culture 
value in study of the classic or modern foreign lan- 
guage than in the study of English. Language 
ought to be learned as far as possible in an inciden- 
tal way; that is, incidentally to the accomplishment 
of some other task. For example, a good way to 
begin the teaching of reading to lowest or first grade 
pupils would be to have a printed chart containing a 
graded series of interesting gems of literature, 
poetry and prose, to be memorized and studied, the 
art of reading to be acquired incidentally to such 
memorizing and study. Suppose the first of these to 
be something like 

"Twinkle, twinkle little star! 
How I wonder what you are! 
Up above the world so high, 
Like a diamond in the sky!" 
The object would be to memorize this little selec- 
tion in connection with the printed lines on the 
chart, to be able to read it orally, and to point out 
the correct sight-symbol of the spoken word on the 
chart, in proper sequence and with proper emphasis 
on words and parts of words, the words of two sylla- 
bles having the syllables divided with a heavy dash 
on the chart. 
There should be- no haste in the memorizing and 

39 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

correlating of sight-symbols with sound-symbols — 
printed words with spoken words — in connection 
with the first memory gem selected for instruction. 
The one given is not necessarily the best one. A 
simpler one could be selected. But the first one 
and all that followed, whether poetry or prose, 
should be selected from actual classic literature, 
within the comprehension of the children. And 
what has been said of science and mathematics is 
also true of literature: that is, real literature has its 
simple phases or selections that can be used in the 
primary-school, and nothing but selections from the 
best literature, literature worth knowing, studying 
and memorizing, should have any place in the 
schools or in any grade of the schools. Made-up 
[school literature is of doubtful, or, at best, of eph- 
emeral value. If a taste for real literature, the lit- 
erature of the Bible and of the standard authors is 
to be cultivated, then only real literature should 
have a place in the school curriculum. 

Returning to the first-chosen selection, there 
should be no haste in studying it. In its mastery by 
the method above suggested, several valuable results 
would be attained : the child would learn that spoken 
words have a graphic or sight equivalence, and vice- 
versa, that certain sight or written symbols have an 
oral equivalence; second, that the order of the sight 
symbols and their emphasis corresponds to the order 
40 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

and emphasis of the spoken words. Not that the 
child would know these facts as a formula or general 
statement, but he would know in a practical, con- 
crete, or perceptive way. 

The next step, after learning the selection as 
above indicated, would be to have each child type- 
write the selection, using a machine whose key- 
board would have letters similar to the chart letters, 
the teacher instructing the little ones how to use the 
machine. There should be one or two writing- 
machines in every grade of every school. Perhaps 
a simplified form of a practical typewriter will yet 
be brought down in price so that each pupil could 
have his own individual machine. Educators have 
been slow to recognize the educational value of the 
typewriter in the public school. It is destined to 
general use in schools in connection with the teach- 
ing of correct word-forms or spelling, and iri com- 
position exercises, particularly letter-writing and 
business forms. 

The first-grade boy, in transcribing his first lesson 
in reading on a writing-machine, will learn that the 
sight-forms or printed words are made of parts — 
letters — in a certain order or sequence for each par- 
ticular word. No effort should be made by the 
teacher at this stage ,to teach the names or values 
phonically, of the letters. As for the names of the 
letters, the pupils' own curiosity and interest in find- 

41 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

ing letters on the key-board to correspond with the 
letters of the selection or quotation on the chart, 
will awaken in him a desire to know the names, at 
least, of the letters, and even if he is not taught 
them formally at all by the teacher, he would find 
them out from older pupils or from his parents at 
home. The children would be allowed to keep their 
type-written lesson on slips of paper to be taken 
home for exhibition and discussion in the home 
circle. 

This method of memorizing selections from liter- 
ature in connection with the printed form of the 
selections should be continued during the first, sec- 
ond and third years of the primary-school on graded, 
printed, reading charts. Results valuable in two 
important directions would be secured: First, the 
child would be learning to read in a natural, rational 
way, incidental to the memorizing of the selections; 
second, he would be storing his memory with valu- 
able literary material which would serve as a nucleus 
for the study of literature from text-classics in sub- 
sequent grades. 

Reading taught and learned in this way would 
prove to be an interesting, intellectual and emo- 
tional stimulus. Attention could be paid to expres- 
sion in elocution, and the child unencumbered with 
the minutiae of learning letters, syllables, sound 
and diacritical markings, would grasp the words, 
42 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

sentences, and meaning as a whole, and be free to 
give proper expression to the sight-forms. Nothing 
is more educative to the child than intelligent oral 
expression under the stimulus of interest and emo- 
tions awakened by the thought and sentiment of 
literary sight-forms, and their proper oral expression 
or elocution. The child would learn to read as he 
learns to talk — in sentences, and under the influence 
of an interest that would have an objective excitant, 
and an adequate or sufficient motive — the motive 
being the memorizing of the selections, or rather, 
the sense of mastery, and of emotional and intellec- 
tual pleasure, attendant upon memorizing; and the 
stimulus (or stimuli rather) being the printed sight- 
form as an object of curiosity and interest, and the 
teacher's oral interpretation of the sight-form. 

Then, too, the practice of type-writing the selec- 
tions, which should be kept up during the three 
years, would be of great value in clinching correct 
word-forms in the child's sight-memory, while, since 
the child by the law of association constantly asso- 
ciates and recalls the sound equivalents as he repro- 
duces the sight-forms — ear- or sound-memory would 
also be developed by one of the most remarkable 
powers of the humao brain, namely, that of trans- 
forming the potential ideation gained from one 
sense-organ directly to sensor equivalents in the 
brain tract devoted to the ideation of a different 

43 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

sense-organ. Furthermore, as a matter of fact, in 
three years of such a teaching of reading as this, in 
which the teacher would resolutely avoid any ref- 
erence to the names of letters or spelling, seeking 
only to familiarize the child with correct oral expres- 
sion of the printed forms, the child would learn the 
letters, and much of the sound values of letters, and 
syllables in spelling, without any aid whatever from 
the teacher. Thus a vast amount of "grind" now 
used in teaching letters and syllables would be 
avoided. 

At the beginning of the fourth year, spelling 
would be taken up formally, using a good text-book 
in which the words would be arranged by their 
phonetic classification and resemblances. And of 
such books the writer regards the old "Blue-Back" 
or Webster's Speller as the best, judged by the 
comparative results of its use. 

Spelling, as now taken up at the beginning of the 
fourth year, should be designed and taught strictly 
with the idea of giving the child skill in the powers 
or phonic values of letters in combinations, in a 
purely mechanical-phonic way, so as to enable the 
child to pronounce correctly any regularly-spelled 
word in the language, and to pronounce and spell 
the ordinary words which present phonetic irregu- 
larities. There should be a constant use of the type- 
writer in the spelling class. The aim should be to 

44 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

prepare the child to take up reading from a well- 
edited reading-book, containing only selections from 
standard literature which are within the range of his 
intellectual development, with illustrations which 
should be reproductions of master-artists in engrav- 
ing and painting. It will be noticed that reading as 
suggested above is the reverse in process, from read- 
ing he would now be taught to do from his read- 
ing-book. By the method above suggested for 
teaching beginners to read, he would be transferring 
or translating the significance of ear or sound sym- 
bols to sight or printed symbols. After he has 
learned how to do this, so that the eye or sight-sym- 
bols come to stand directly for ideas, he is then pre- 
pared for the reverse process, of transferring eye or 
sight-symbols of his reading-book into the sound or 
oral symbols of elocution or good reading. This 
fourth year, spent in formal spelling, would thus be 
an intermediary year, designed to give the child a 
mechanical or phonetic skill in the powers of letters 
in combination — a mechanical facility in pronuncia- 
tion. 

A word here as to selections made for children's 
readers. There is a predominant idea that in mak- 
ing selections for readers for children, novelty 
should be the criterion, and selections are ruled out 
because they were included in the reading-books of 
a former generation." In this way, productions of 
45 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

classic excellence, are made to give way to new 
pieces of no standing in literature. Because certain 
recitations were included in reading-books used by 
the father or grandfather of the child, is a poor 
reason for excluding them from the books of the 
children of the present generations. Any one who 
will compare some of the reading-books of the hour 
with the old books for children, will be struck with 
the inferiority of the former. The old recitations 
are ridiculed, when the truth is, such a one as 
"Bingen on the Rhine," for example, is of peren- 
nial interest and beauty. Even "The Boy Stood on 
the Burning Deck," is better than many of the eph- 
emeral, mediocre selections, and "made-up" school 
literature of the period. 

It will be objected, that what is here outlined as 
appropriate and necessary in the education of the 
child, will overcrowd the curriculum, and add to the 
burdens of the already overburdened school-boy. 
But it will be appropriate to answer that most of 
the instruction in the foun primary years would be 
oral, and the child's activities would be oral, obser- 
vational, manual, and experimental, while the variety 
of instruction and activities would appeal to the vari- 
ety of the boys' interests. Life is complex and so 
is human nature — and child nature and the curricu- 
lum should correspond to the range of the interests 
and activities of childhood. At present the burden 
46 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

of educational methods in vogue rests on the optic 
nerve,. which is overtaxed by the constant perusal of 
text-books. The burden must be distributed to* the 
auditory and tactual nerves, and the vocal chords and 
muscles, especially those of the hand and arm. A 
school day affords time for six half-hour, or nine 
third-hour, periods, before noon, and four half-hour, 
-or six third-hour, periods, after noon. "Within this 
time the work here suggested can be organized 
efficiently and carried forward by live, prepared 
teachers. 

The departmental system now confined to high- 
schools could well be introduced as to certain sub- 
jects in the primary-schools and doubtless will be 
introduced. The class-room teacher would teach, 
say, such subjects as reading, numbers, geometry 
and geography, while special department teachers 
would instruct successive classes in such subjects as 
drawing, mechanical and freehand; manual-indus- 
trial art; physical science; biology; and musiq and 
physical culture — with separate departmental rooms 
and instructors for each of the subjects named. 
This departmental method would relieve the regu- 
lar grade or class teacher, and give variety and 
movement and added interest to the children's work. 

lii some such way as here suggested it is entirely 
possible to construct and organize a curriculum and 
daily schedule which will meet and satisfy the whole 

47 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

range of the activities and interests of childhood. 

The great subjects through which the mind real- 
izes and organizes itself into individuality (percep- 
tual being), personality (conceptual being) , and char- 
acter (ethical being), are broadly: the Sciences, in 
their dual aspect as mechanical or physical on the 
one hand, and as vital, biological, or organic on the 
other; Mathematics, as geometry, and as number or 
arithmetic; Manual-industrial art; Drawing, Me- 
chanical and Freehand; Singing and Physical Cul- 
ture; Reading, Composition and Elocution. 

Along these lines of knowledge and action, which 
are themselves the priceless results of the body, 
mind, and heart struggles and developments of the 
centuries and the ages, the curriculum and schedule 
of the school for childhood — ^the primary-grammar 
school of the eight-year school period of child- 
hood — should be organized to provide instruction, 
and action or practice, as the means of mental- 
moral unfolding and growth. 

Nothing has been said of conduct or moral train- 
ing. Yet every act of mind or body is a moral act 
— either good or bad — and every act has a moral 
quality which is its distinguishing underlying char- 
acteristic — ^its very essence or heart. Every mental 
act is mental-moral and has its moral sign or coef- 
ficient. Just as electricity is necessarily either posi- 
tive or negative, so all human activity is either 
48 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

morally good or morally bad. No act either of body 
or mind is neutral; even involuntary, reflex, or 
instinctive action in man — in human nature — has a 
moral quality determined by the prevailing or domi- 
nant voluntary moral motive, will, choice and dispo- 
sition. Just as every particle of matter has weight 
in addition to all its other properties, so every act 
has a character, a moral drift or tendency. Moral- 
ity is the true organizing, conserving force in life 
and education. It is the governor of the engine of 
human activity. And the underlying motive of the 
education of children must be the attainment of 
character as expressed in such phrasal terms as 
purity, industry, honesty, kindness, honor, truthful- 
ness and the' like. And the whole drift of school 
organization and action should be toward character 
development. It is the touchstone, the supreme 
test, the final goal. And all systems and methods 
are most efficient when they are so organized and 
conducted that while meeting lesser or lower ends 
they also contribute positively to this highest end. 

The whole structure of the ocean-liner — its hull, 
its machinery, its crew — is intended to enable it to 
carry its cargo into port. In this connection the 
school system is the ship; the teachers are the 
crew; the superintendent is the captain at the helm; 
the children are- the precious cargo — and the port 
is character. 

49 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

Hence, the very atmosphere of the school — its 
unconscious organic influence as well as its con- 
sciously ordered plans, purposes, and activities, must 
conduce to character-building in child nature. The 
physical cleanliness and neatness of buildings, 
appurtenances and premises; the orderly, prompt 
movement of its scheduled exercises; the 'direct 
personal influence of the teachers; the group tone 
and spirit of its pupils in class-room and on play- 
grounds — all these are factors in an organic influ- 
ence that should be stimulative, directive, and for- 
mative of character in the children. 

Nor in emphasizing the need of a broader, deeper 
intellectual development for children is it meant to 
minimize physical development and culture. The 
; increased interest in such development and culture 
( is one of the hopeful "signs of the time." Play, 
fair, earnest play, games and sports are among the 
indispensable factors in the development of the 
child. 

As to the relation of the Bible to the public 
schools, it is one of the anomalies of a civilization 
founded on the Bible, on freedom of its interpreta- 
tion and of religious worship and opinion, that the 
Bible, which has been so potent an inspiration in 
creating and shaping this civilization, should be 
excluded from the public schools. And stranger 
still that it should be an Old World element of 

50 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

recent assimilation that leads in the demand for 
such exclusion, coming as this element does from 
lands where they have suffered limitation^ and per- 
secution because of the absence of religious and 
political freedom which this Book has secured. The 
very Book they oppose is the Book whose influence 
has formed the principles of human freedom and 
democracy which make possible their presence and 
citizenship in America — yea, that gives the very 
freedom they use in demanding its exclusion from 
the schools of the American people. This is a 
Christian land and the open Bible in every school- 
room should be the symbol of its Christian civiliza- 
tion. 

If it is lawful to put Bibles in hotels and cars — 
and no one has denied this — it is lawful to put 
the Bible into the schools. Yea, and to have it 
read — without sectarian comment. The spirit of 
Continental rationalism is un-American and should 
not be permitted to exclude the Bible from the pub- 
lic schools. This spirit has atrophied the spiritual 
life of France with its declining birth-rate and 
diminishing population. It threatens Germany, the 
birthplace of religious freedom, where the Bible 
was first translated into the vernacular. And it 
dares to close in the schools of American children 
that Book whose spirit and teachings underlie 
Anglo-Saxon civilization, law, government and lit- 

51 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

erature — ^that Book which symbolizes at once free- 
dom and order; progress and conservation; work 
and worship; faith and knowledge. 

The free and open Bible in that matchless version 
of King James which makes it the very paragon of 
English literature (a version so pure and perfect as 
to lead one to believe the translators were under 
divine guidance and inspiration) is the peculiar and 
priceless treasure and inspiration of the Anglo- 
Saxon race — ^^a people combining the qualities of the 
Teutonic chivalry with the religious capacities of 
the Hebrew — a people whose westward trend, 
whether blazed through continental - forest or push- 
ing over lakes, stream.s and mountains; over deserts 
and glaciers; or over seas — has been the track of 
empire. Who doubts but that its abandonment of 
the Bible would mark the beginning of its decline? 

The Bible, or at least selections from it, such as 
the Tv/enty-third Psalm, the First Chapter of Gene- 
sis, the Sermon on the Mount, the Nineteenth 
Psalm, the Thirteenth Chapter of the First Corin- 
thians, the Sixth Chapter of the Ephesians, should 
be memorized and often repeated — including also 
the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. 
It is the lack of the restraining influences of that 
moral-religious truth most efficiently set forth in 
Scripture that accounts in large measure for the 
unsatisfactory results of popular education. Relig- 

52 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

ion in some form is inseparable from human nature. 
No group of people, that is no race or nation, has 
ever risen to power apart from a religion, and it 
declines when its religion loses its forcd and sanc- 
tion. Religion has been the unifying, directing 
force, in the development of nations and in the 
persistence of race-types. It is fundamental as to 
all other institutions of civilization and profoundly 
influences even the family life which necessarily is 
the most elementary of human institutions. The 
Hebrew is the most persistent of Aryan race-types, 
and the Hebrew has clung most unchangeably to 
the religion of his race. 

Tha American public school should be character- 
ized by a sanely religious, unsectarian spirit. It 
should be distinctively Christian, for only thus can 
thd public schools accomplish their high mission in 
a Christian nation. This does not mean that there 
should be any churchism or ecclesiasticism, for 
Christianity is broader than any church. It is the 
religion of democracy which is its product; for 
there was never a true democracy apart from Chris- 
tianity. In the teachings of Paul lie the/ germs of 
all modern liberty and energy of progress; for the 
spirit of Christ has been the key that has unlocked 
all the bondages of men whether these bondages 
were religious, intellectual, moral, political, or 
physical. 

53 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

Intellectually, the business of the schools for 
childhood is the development of strong vital per- 
cepts or ideas by means of the fundamental human 
arts and sciences preparatory to the acquisition of 
concepts or general notions in scientific form and 
their use and organization as instrumentalities to 
useful and efficient thinking and living. And the 
fundamental human arts and sciences must have 
their roots in the primary school. 

The fundamental percepts or ideas which the 
primary-school should develop correspond to the 
"'mother ideas" of Pestalozzi, and they should be 
acquired as he insisted they should be : that is, not 
in a second-hand way through books, but first-hand, 
by the observation and handling of things them- 
selves. "The relation of percepts to concepts," says 
Prof. William James, "is that of sight to touch." 

Pupils developed along the lines herein sug- 
gested would be superior ini every educational way 
to pupils who are trained, but at the same time sup- 
pressed, by present methods. The high-schools 
everywhere, by virtue of better prepared entrants, 
would be more truly and completely what they have 
been called, namely, "the colleges of the people.^' 
While colleges and universities and professional 
schools would become conscious of the impulse and 
uplift due to the general trend of an intellectual 
awakening among the youth of the nation. The 
54 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

improvement sought for in the colleges and univer- 
sities must come from below. The standard of the 
primary-grammar school must be raised. The child 
is really imprisoned by present methods. He waits 
the liberation at your hands. "Loose him and let 
him go!" 

There is too much intellectual barrenness in the 
child's curriculum. It is sometimes a desert rather 
than a child-garden. An American writer (Mr. 
McCready Sykes) has recently remarked: "It has 
been said that as each century has in a way its own 
distinguishing characteristics, the twentieth century 
has started out as the Century of the Child. * * * 
We are coming to realize the profound significance 
of the prolonged infancy of man. Alone among cre- 
ated beings, Tnan! attains maturity only after a long 
span of years. As civilization advances, the mean- 
ing of that long stretch of formative life comes into 
clearer and clearer view. And as for the children 
themselves * * * (with) their serene and trustful 
outlook on the world about them * * * they are 
more than ever dwellers in the Interpreter's House, 
nearer perhaps than the rest of us to the councils 
of the gods." 

Truly, the child as yet is neither understood nor 
trusted. He is underestimated, undervalued. Yet, 
he is in truth, "the father of the man." Helpless 
and ignorant, though at the same time he is intelli- 

55 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD, 

gence incarnate, the child faces the unknown in his 
weakness, and smiles, because he has faith; because 
he is faith itself. No wonder the Great Teacher 
took a, little child and set him in the midst of them 
and said: "Except ye become as this little child, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." It is 
a striking thing that all the heathen religio-philo- 
sophical systems seem to have missed the signifi- 
cance and mission of childhood and to have disre- 
garded, distrusted, or even disliked the child, some 
even to the extent of the sacrifice of children to 
placate infernal deities. But Christianity, creator 
of free science, free education and free religion, 
makes the child its symbol and the welfare and edu- 
cation of the child its highest mission. 

The child of the future will be a splendid creature, 
and through him will arise a splendid humanity and 
civilization. M(an must be lifted up by the lifting 
up of the child. The surest way to exalt manhood 
is to purify, strengthen, exalt and protect childhood. 
By all and every means at its command Christian 
civilization must protect the child from those cor- 
rupting influences and institutions which still mar 
the purity and strength of that civilization, and espec- 
ially from the anti-Christian, anti-educative, morally, 
mentally, and physically disintegrating influences of 
the drink habit and traffic. For strong drink is an 
antidote to the educational process, tending, as it 
56 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

<ioes, to the atrophy, coagulation, and paralysis of 
the delicate neural processes of the cerebrum, on 
which education and the higher life of man — the life 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual — depend. 

Meanwhile let the teacher be the voice of one 
crying in a wilderness of educational confusion and 
misconception: "Prepare ye the way for the child! 
Make straight his path!" 

THE ORIENTAL AND THE OCCIDENTAL WRIT- 
TEN LANGUAGES. 

True education and true science are corollaries 
or complements, mutually. The wonderful East, 
despite its progress in some directions and its power 
in others, despite the antiquity of its culture, missed 
both. One reason for this, or at least one factor in 
the complex of reasons, may be the differences in 
the development of the written languages of the 
East and West respectively. The languages of the 
West, beginning with the Greek and its kindred the 
Latin and coming on to and including the chief mod- 
ern languages of Europe and America are phonetic 
essentially; that is, in these written languages the 
letters and syllables have an immediate phonic 
value or equivalence, thus making the written or 
sight language the .immediate replica, the intimate 
responsive environment, the sensitive differential, 
of the oral language, and thus of thought itself, 

57 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

Such languages, thought and language reacting 
directly each on the other, become the powerful 
and accurate instruments of thought and bear a 
close relationship to reality. They become the lan- 
guages of fact and reality, and thus are adapted to 
the develiopment of truth — philosophic, historical, 
and scientific truth — as based on fact and reality. 
The phonetically-correlated written or sight lan- 
guage, while stimulating thought, at the same time 
controls it, or is capable of such control, thus pre- 
venting or discouraging unbridled extravagances of 
the imagination and keeping the foot of thought 
ever on or near the solid ground of reality and fact 
— that is, of truth. For language is a device for the 
expression and preservation of truth, and certain 
languages seem better adapted to this end than cer- 
tain others. 

The Oriental languages are essentially ideogram- 
matic or hieroglyphic, and not phonetic. In them 
there is no phonetic relationship between the writ- 
ten language — ^the written alphabet and syllable — • 
and the oral speech. This accounts for the com- 
plexity of the Oriental languages, the difficulty the 
Western mind encounters in mastering them, owing 
to the vast number of different ideographic sym- 
bols necessary to express different objects and 
actions; to the fact that the oral names of these 
characters bear no phonic relationship to the char- 
58 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

acters themselves. In short, the Oriental word-signs 
are not sound-symbols. The superiority of the 
Western phonetic languages in which approximately 
no more elementary word-signs or letters are needed 
than there are vocal elements in the spoken tongue 
is apparent. In short, the Oriental written languages 
have no true alphabet in the Western sense — that 
is, no set of graphic symbols corresponding approxi- 
mately! in number and meaning or use, to the oral 
symbols of the spoken language. Hence, to master 
an Oriental written language or literature, a vast 
number of arbitrary word-signs, or historically-modi- 
fied hieroglyphs, must be arbitrarily learned by 
committing their forms to eye or sight memory, the 
oral equivalent to each written word-sign affording 
no key to the written word-sign as a whole or as to 
the graphic elements which compose it. Thus the 
Oriental written languages are lacking in that direct 
phonetic relationship to oral speech, and through it, 
to thought itself, which is necessary for a mutual 
control and check or balance between the written 
and spoken tongues, and between the development 
of thought and the development of thought-expres- 
sion in literary, philosophic or historical literature. 

Hence it follows that the Oriental literature fails 
to maintain the proper balance between fact and 
reality on the one hand, and imagination or specula- 
tion on the other. Hence, too, there is no reliable 

59 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

history recorded in Oriental tongues; there has been 
no development of science. Its literature has been 
the literature of an extravagant mystic philosophy and 
poetry which bear little relation to fact, reality, or 
truth. There has been culture but no true devel- 
opment of rational education which is based on fact 
and truth, which in turn make possible scientific 
conceptions and principles. 

On the other hand, the Western or Aryan mind, 
by the superior force of a more robust, decisive, 
inventive , aggressive personality and heredity, 
bridged the chasm between objective and subjective 
language, or rather, between language by sight and 
language by sound; between the graphic mark or 
symbol for objects and actions in the external envi- 
ronment, and the spoken word or sound-symbol — by 
giving the external graphic symbol a phonetic value 
— by establishing between the external graphic or 
sight-symbol and the spoken word or sound-symbol, 
standing for the same object or action, an immedi- 
ate and continuous phonic correspondence and 
equivalence. Let A represent a graphic sign or 
•mark used as the sign of any object or action in 
environment or experience, and suggesting by sight 
the idea to the mind of the given object or action. 

Let B represent the spoken word or sound-symbol 
which suggests by sound the same idea to the mind 
of the given object or action. 
60 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

Let C represent the common idea suggested 
through sight by A and through sound by B. 

Then we have the following formulas as appli- 
cable to the Oriental languages: 

C corresponds to or varies as A. 

C corresponds to or varies as B. 

But A does not correspond to or vary as B. 

And B does not correspond to or vary as A. 
In the case of the Western or Aryan languages: 

C corresponds to or varies as A. 

C corresponds to or varies as B. 

And A corresponds to and varies as B. 

And B corresponds to and varies as A. 
That is, in the case of thq Western or Aryan lan- 
guages, A and B are mutually variable or mutually 
correspondent. In other words, in the Western or 
Aryan language scheme or system, the sight and 
sound languages — that is the written and spoken 
languages — are mutually correspondent and mutually 
variant. Or perhaps we might more strictly say, to 
borrow a mathematical phrase, that the sight lan- 
guages of the Aryan people are a function of their 
sound languages, thus making them approximately 
the perfect written tongues. While in the case of 
the Oriental languages, the sight language or written 
language is not in general a function, variant or 
correspondent of the spoken tongue. This differ- 
ence in language must be the index of a deeper dif- 

61 



APR 6 1912 



THE EDUCATION OF CHILDHOOD. 

ference in mental functioning and perhaps explains, 
in part at least, the "mystery" of the East and the 
difficulty felt by the Western mind in fathoming the 
mind Oriental. Thus, racial differences are not 
superficial, but lie deeper in the mental, social, 
political and religious, as well as physical or ethno- 
logical heredity of the races. And language is one 
of the most important indices, as well as instru- 
ments, and stimuli, of human development. The 
Greek' tongue, the most perfect of the historic pho- 
netic languages, must thus have been both a result 
and an efficient cause in Attic development, and its 
study must always remain a valuable means to men- 
tal culture and development, and a key to the devel- 
opment and achievements of that marvelous and 
brilliant people whose development and achieve- 
ments helped in^ no strained or irrelevant sense to 
make modern science possible. And it was their 
wonderful language which made possible and stim- 
ulated their development and achievements. 




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